Missouri bans teachers from friending students on facebook, as an attempt to prevent future student teacher sex scandals. Well I suppose that without the sensual siren song that is Farmville acting as an aphrodisiac, restraint might be more likely.

#4: “Begley quotes signs referenced in Revelation 16, saying “The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it became as the blood of a dead man, and every living soul died in the sea. The third angel poured out his bowl upon the rivers and the fountains of water, and they became blood.”

Um. Right. If you read that and think for a second, you should note the lack of, um, SEAS or OCEANS that are blood red. This happens BEFORE the rivers and fountains become blood.

Also note the amount of living souls on the sea. This amount is greater then one, so the 2nd Angel hasn’t come and made it so that “every living soul died in the sea.” Kinda sad when the flaw I find in your argument is your OWN quote.

Oh, and didn’t we have a rapture like 2 months ago? Sheesh.

#8: reading the shitstorm about that is amusing. Quite a complex thing really. Gotta wonder what online gaming will be like in 10 years, what with micro-transactions and real world trading becoming common. I wonder if all MMOs will turn into Second Life…

Re: #1: Haven’t the youth in that country suffered enough? Now they’re banning their video games?

Re: #6: I’m actually a big fan of the idea of teachers and students not being allowed to friend each other on Facebook for the same reason the teacher doesn’t play Pog with the kids during the lunch break or whatever it is kids do during lunch these days. It’s just not part of the teacher/student relationship. You need some separation so that the teacher can do their job, which includes un-friend-like things such as grading the kids’ work and objectively laying down the law when he screws up.

If you read the article where the teachers put in their concerns, you should find that some teachers are against this ban (or whatever you call it) because the sort of closed, personal communications found on facebook and other social networks might be the only place certain kids feel comfortable talking about their problems.

I do see where you’re coming from though, because students and teachers shouldn’t have a “friend” relationship with each other because it doesn’t work with the teacher/student relationship, not to mention the possiblity of it being used to develop a more personal relationship.

Obviously not..why blame society as a whole or other reasons whenyou can blame video games… After all, it’s not like it was Norway’s fault or anything…
As for the teacher/student facebook ban… uh.. do they really think this will help? Seems most of the teachers doing this do it via cell phones and texting. All this really does is make it harder for teachers who really care and try to help the kids they teach to reach out, the other kind, this will not phase at all.

#2- Ah Washington, home of some of the richest hippies in the world. Also alot of people who bought into the whole EEEEEVIIIIIL Vaccine’s thing. I did space my daughter’s shots out, but she’s got them all, I’ve seen people from third world countries where they still have these diseases and I’d rather not have my child dead or permanently disfigured.

Amazngly enough, these people usually site the quavk’s study about autism.. and stopped doing research when he was nailed because the whole reason behind his entire anti-vaccination campaign was basically to discredit the companies production vaccines at the time so his company can gather more of the market share.

The problem is that the poor kids whose parents don’t vaccinate them aren’t to blame and it allows diseases that otherwise wouldn’t flourish to spread where it otherwise wouldn’t, putting people who legitimately can’t get the vaccines or with weakened immune systems at risk. It’s like drunk driving, except 100% preventable.

So is drunk driving 100% preventable. It’s even more preventable than vaccines preventing disease because no vaccine is 100% effective. If everyone just didn’t drive after drinking there would be no drunk driving. It’s a choice, not an accident of exposure to a virus. Just sayin.

The thing about drunk driving is, sometimes it happens because drunk people think it’s OK to drive. Their being drunk could stop them from making the smart decision they might have made while sober. Whereas people who choose not to get vaccines are probably not acting under the influence of a substance and are just stupid. In other words, drunk driving isn’t 100% preventable because drunk people cannot be relied on to make smart decisions 100% of the time. On the other hand, there is no reason someone not allergic to a vaccine shouldn’t get one other than stupidity, which is inexcusable. As to vaccines not being 100% effective, how does that relate to choosing not to receive one?

Brianna reply on August 4th, 2011 2:39 am:

The rate at which the body metabolizes alcohol is widely publicized–1 standard drink per hour. A responsible drinker who is aware that he/she is going to be driving after consuming alcohol drinks no more than that and stops consuming alcohol at least one hour before driving, preferably an hour and a half. Thus they never drive drunk. If they plan to consume more they make plans ahead of time to ride with someone who doesn’t drink alcohol at that party/bar/social get together or make an appointment for a cab to pick them up at a predetermined time. This means that drunk driving is, indeed, 100% preventable. It is a CHOICE to drive while intoxicated. It is a CHOICE to consume alcohol at all. Never consume alcohol and you will not drive drunk. Disease is not 100% preventable through vaccinations because no vaccine ever developed is 100% effective. If driving drunk is 100% preventable and disease is not, it then follows that driving drunk is more preventable than disease is even with vaccines. All this was in response to your blanket statement that drunk driving is not 100% preventable but that disease is 100% preventable through vaccinations. Sorry, but neither of your two statements is true.

Having made the reasoning clear, I must further clarify by saying that vaccines do seem to prevent epidemics. They do not prevent 100% of cases of the diseases in those who are vaccinated, but there have so far not been any recorded epidemics of said diseases within populations in which very high proportions of individuals have been vaccinated.

In defense of myself I must proclaim that my thinking has been contaminated by college courses in statistics, ethics, biology, microbiology, psychology, sociology and addictions counseling. I must further state that I have never driven drunk, but I have poured myself into a cab and been driven home or ridden with a sober companion. I have also been the sober driver for a car full of drunks. I have both theoretical and “field experience.”

Taliesin reply on August 4th, 2011 5:11 pm:

Yes it’s a choice, a choice that, statistically speaking, some people will always make. To someone, somewhere, it will seem like a good idea. Not getting vaccinated, (and I specifically mean the act of getting the shot, not disease prevention in general,) Should never seem like a good idea to anyone. It is the result of ignorance. My argument is that while drunk driving is a bad decision also based on the ignorance of it’s dangers, that ignorance could be encouraged by the consumption of alcohol.
(TL;DR Alcohol can lead to bad choices.)
As opposed to vaccines, which any educated person should know to get and any uneducated person can be taught to know better. The “100% blah blah blah” is more of an exaggeration I tried to use to illustrate instances of drunk driving should outweigh instances of people being so naturally stupid they don’t get vaccinated.

Laurellian reply on August 15th, 2011 10:54 am:

actually no one who has had the teanus vaccine and kept it up to date has ever caught or died of tetanus..that’d be pretty much a 100% success rate. Now another note..some vaccine’s are not 100%, but one that is only, say 20% effective is better then nothing (effective is gauged by total immunity).. meaning, say a disease with a 100% death rate would kill only 80% of those who were vaccinated… but that leaves out partial immunity… only 20% would be totally immunised, but the other 80 will have developed antibodies to lower the severity of said disease.
Fact is, since immunizations programs started, many once thought fatal diseases that were regularly occuring epidemics in areas, stopped being so and common childhood killers such as diptheria and etc.. are not so common anymore here. Further proof vaccinatons work..smalpox has been virtually eradicated except for in labs…I’m old enough and lucky enough to have had it..what about you?
Smallpox was one of the largest killers in history… the first effective vaccine, basically infecting people with cowpox, was not 100% effective, but did make it less virulant in those who were vaccinated, so even if they did get smallpox, they usually survived it.
Now drunk driving and vaccination should not be used with each other as an example. You could have used other examples..like perhaps, those who voted for say, all the politicians since WWII who’s accumulative effect on our nation has been to create this time of suckness, was preventable if people actually thought about the real issues and people they were electing…. I mean come on..a drunk deciding to drive versus a supposed intellectual who refuses to immunise their children… after supposedly doing research… I’d say maybe .08% of drunk driving actually result in accidents, even less fatalities…just off the top of my head..where as not immunising your child out of a sense of intellectualness, seems to lay a huge disclaimer on that claim in the first place.

I tell my daughter everytime she’s gotten her shots that shes lucky that i’m not a crazy hippie and that I believe in vaccinations. I don’t want my daughter to get some crazy a$$ disease. Did I mention shes only 9 months…

Everytime someone preaches the dangers of vaccines to me I tell them to go look at all the graves of children in any cemetery over 75 years old. I’ll take the small risk of reaction, etc. compared to a 1 in 3 death rate for children under 5. I know there some other factors there (antibotics for example), but vaccines are a big big factor in the change from then to now.

actually many of the antivaccine rely on the fact antibiotics are so good…but do not realise vaccines are usually for virus based diseases or etc…things antibiotics do not work on… plus they forget the golden rule of health care..an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Vaccines are preventives, not cures. How serious am I about vaccines..when it was publicised some polio vaccines may have been faulty..I went ahead and had my entire family re-vaccinated, including myself, wife, and kids. Why? Well, our doctors…mine especially who are dead from when I was a child… could not always verify the lot and batch..so better safe then sorry.
I’ve laos kept my own vaccinations up, something many do not do, except perhaps military personnel. Some jobs I have had required not normal vacinations..and I had them and require booster shots to remain effective..so I’ve kept them up…. If I get cut and cannot remember for sure when my last Tetanus shot was, I make sure to request it again. I get a yearly Flu shot and etc. Which at one job got me in trouble because afterwards I got the flu…got written up because the shot wa svia work…then had it taken off hen they found out it was the wrong vaccine. The Flu vaccine is a guess at which will be coming, and that year they got it wrong.

Hmm.I figure you could basically shorten the how not to get eaten by a lion list to saying..stay out of Africa…and free ranging zoo parks period..plus areas where they may be loose..like Florida, England (hey the mystery cats, you never know..) and etc.
Now for a more humourous bent..since animals naturally go for weakest prey around..toss the most irritating child in the party their way and you should be safe. Lions are not as likely to attack groups..lol. I thought they stalked many herd animals looking for the slow, young, weak, incautious to cut out of the herd…which usually says screw him, lets get out of here… So always take a redheaded stepchild along on safari outings for and added additional safety feature…

Re: #4: Even a lot of the hardcore evangelicals in Texas who’d be fans of pointing out signs of the End Times are all, like, “Uh, drought?” Since the drought is clearly the #1 thing to blame for our bodies of water getting completely fucked the hell up, including having some of them turn red from an overabundance of algae and sudden lack of water.

Re: #2: I love that you posted what you did. Stupid anti-vaccine hipster morons. They won’t feed their babies anything but organic baby food, but they will subject their kids to developing measles, mumps, rubella, polio, or anything else we’re supposed to be eradicating. If it’d been up to these morons, we’d still be seeing global smallpox epidemics and they’d be the first to see it.